All posts by Juan B. Plaza
The Responsibility to Map the U.S. Coastline
(And the Inevitability of New Geodetic and Tidal Datums) Since the arrival of the first pilgrims to the North American continent, there has been a need for precise knowledge of the coastline of the new country, and the reasons are obvious. Arrival by boat was the only alternative when crossing the Atlantic and escaping religious...
A Decade of Uncrewed Photogrammetry
Some might have had a peek at photogrammetry drones before 2013, but for me 2023 marks a decade since I first laid eyes on an uncrewed aircraft that “claimed” to do what I had been doing for years in bigger, more stable airplanes in the joyful company of pilots, copilots, camera operators, and navigators. In...
The Future of Aerial Photogrammetry
Rapid advances in technology are changing the way we map from the air, but the 100-year-old technology of mapping by crewed airplanes will continue to fly into the future For thousands of years cartographers made maps using tools that mostly measured angles and distances, allowing for positioning of fixed objects over unknown topography. The earliest...
Safety is Paramount in Aerial Drone Mapping
As the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) prepares to release its ruling covering uncrewed aircraft flights beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) in the National Airspace (NAS) the entire industry is holding its breath preparing for a new era of certainty and expansion. Aerial photogrammetry will be one of the immediate beneficiaries of this new policy...
Space Mapping
A satellite set to launch in 2024 will scan the Earth’s surface every 12 days. What does that mean for geospatial professionals? During the recent South Florida GIS Summit, I had the pleasure of attending a presentation by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) that blew my mind in terms of potential for the...
Is High-Precision GNSS Coming to Your Smartphone?
We have seen over the past four decades how our traditional profession of making maps went from obscurity to mainstream to widely adopted, everyday reality. When I attended university for my geodesy degree in the early 80s everyone who had a car also had a road map in the glove compartment—from a basic road grid...
